Corporations: General Tire's Widening Tread

Akron's major rubber companies have
diversified so widely that none now derive more than 60% of their sales
from tires. General Tire & Rubber Co., the smallest of Akron's Big Five
in tire sales, is the most versatile of them all. It makes products as
varied as missile motors, water skis and oxygen masks, owns a
wrought-iron company and a bottling plant, has dipped into oceanography
and water desalinization, and was recently awarded a contract by the
State of California to investigate new methods of crime prevention.
General has moved into so many unrelated industries that, with sales...